Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

Originally Posted by Grimmhorn

Spirit vs Int is more interesting now. 3.0 I would have told you go to for Spirit always, but after the nerf and the focus on replenishment, I see them as more or less equal. Realistically your gear is going to have a mix anyway and 99% of your enchants are going to be Spellpower.

Spirit and Int are not "more or less equal." I recommend reading more on EJ for the exact numbers. While we typically cannot choose one or over the other, a raiding druid will always net more mana per fight from int than spirit. However, each additional point of spirit improves the regen value of each point of int. It simply comes down to if you need the regen or not.

Haste vs Crit is more difficult to quantify. Living Seed has made crit a very interesting stat for us. It helps solve the problem of crit heals generally being overheal by putting up a damage shield = to 30% of your crit heal. This will often be 3k-4k worth of healing on a reasonably well set up Nourish (Triple Lifebloom blooms have hit well into 20k heal on a crit but it unfortunately doesn't play with Living Seed.) Haste is tempting because of the lowered global cooldown and speeding up those Nourish Spams. Right now I'm leaning towards Crit when given the choice between two equal sets of gear (common in Heroic/Naxx level items). Uld stuff seems to lean towards Crit. Haste cap w/ GotEM is 359 for a reference point. (Celestial Focus 3% spell haste talent = 253). MP5 is useful, but really doesn't benefit from our talents. Don't run away screaming from it, but it's sorta "Meh".

A GCD spamming druid who occasionally uses directs will benefit very little from crit. Hence, having higher haste allows you to reach the 1s GCD without the need to spec into Celestial Focus. Resto4Life has a nice calculator to determine your levels of haste to GCD cap from hots. However, gear drops are RNG based and so we can't always be picky about it.

Based on regen values, Luminous > Purified. However, if you are a SP whore you should have Jewel Crafting anyway and should socket primarily Runed Dragon's Eyes and Scarlet Rubies. You could then say Purified > Luminous due to the spirit-SP conversion.

I'm also using the Wild Growth and Nourish Glyphs. WG accounts for a tremendous amount of healing. It's also instant cast and will generally heal affected members for about 2k before your other spells even have a chance to land (it ticks every second). It's more useful as a 25 man tool than a 10 though, as even in 25 it can be tough to hit the full 6 targets.

The Rejuvination glyph looks good on paper and is actually pretty good for 5 mans. It generally sucks for 10 and 25's though, as anybody who has health low enough to benefit from the proc is almost certainly being targetted by other raid healers.

If you are in a raiding guild, you should be able to swap out Glyphs very easily. This of course assumes you know how to make gold and can procure the glyphs that are useful for progression. The only exception to this are the newer glyphs, but over time they will become cheaper and more readily available. Certain fights benefit more from one glyph over another (depending on your role of course).

I always raid heal with the exception of General Vezax. For raid healing, I will use SM/WG/Nourish or SM/WG/RJ depending on the fight. I would not exclude the RJ glyph because there are fights where the entire raid can quickly dip under the 50% zone especially in hard modes such as Deconstructor Tantrum or Mimiron Phase 2. If your job is to blanket the raid in a [WG/RJx5]xInfinity + SM rotation where raid wide damage is actually life threatening, then you will see your RJ Glyph shine. Otherwise, of course, it will be useless.

WG is an absolute powerhouse glyph when it hits 6 targets. 10 man or 25 man, WG is our most powerful cast per GCD. However, occasionally I do see parses of druids where their primarily heal for an encounter is WG. For MT healing, weaving in WG's is a powerful raid supplement. For raid healing, we weave it in between our RJ blanketing. However, if all you are casting is WG you should switch to Boomkin/Cat and do our typical 4-5,000 dps to help speed up the kill.

Degrador put together a very nice write-up for druid specs. I've copied it here to keep things condensed into one package. I've also made some very minor editting adjustments to integrate it more naturally into this post and fix some very, very rare typos.

Nourish accounts for very little of my healing in 25 mans (much more in 10 mans, however) and so I prefer to have 3/3 Subtlety since my RJ spamming tends to grab everything in add intense fights. Improved Tranquility is extremely situational and I doubt most druids would use it twice (let alone once) in most fights set aside cases such as Deconstructor.10 hard mode. Most of the tunnel-visioned "elite" druids will call you a n00b for even considering Revitalize, but I consider it a case of comparing "trash vs trash." In our late stages of talent selection, many of them will be of very little use. Therefor, you should select the talents that best "synnergize" with your play style. But in reality, you should try them all out and see which ones you like best.

Lifebloom has changed roles with 3.1. Druids used to "Roll" lifeblooms on multiple targets, stacking the HoT up to 3 and never letting it expire. This provided about 1100ish hp per second per target and could be reliabley done on 2-3 folks, 4 if you were stretching. More than 2 was hard on the mana, but not unreasonable. Now they've changed the mechanics of Lifebloom. Its cost was doubled and it now refunds 1/2 on bloom. You get credit for each stack. This makes rolling blooms very mana intensive and impractical for any stamina-oriented fight unless the tank needs absolute maximum heals. The spell is not worthless, however. The Mana Refund does NOT take into account any discounts you happen to be having. That means single blooms are cheaper. This makes it a perfectly reasonable spell to use for "Touching Up" the raid. It may quite possibley be the cheapest/most efficient heal in our arsenal now (I'm sure elitistjerks have the numbers on this vs Rejuv somewhere). Casting Lifebloom off of a clearcast proc is very nearly a free mini-mana potion. Also note that Lifebloom is a very tactical spell. If there is regular, heavy damage that takes place periodically, you can "Seed" the raid with lifeblooms, trying to land the Bloom after the big hit. It's a great tool despite its naysayers. (Note: Because you generally want the Lifebloom to expire, the LB glyph is pretty much horrid now).

On heavy raid wide damage, RJ will provide more HPS per cast than LB. However, LB has a lower MPS usage per cast. The bonus for LB is that it's stackable, making it effective to use if you run out of targets to RJ (usually in 10 mans). Basically, RJ is our most efficient heal. LB is our cheapest heal (except on Vezax). Of course, WG is king of HPS, HPM, and HPC provided it hits multiple people. For OoC procs (be it from casting or melee), LB is a great spell for the refund. However, if you need to WG and it's available to cast, it's more effective to just OoC-WG then and there than to OoC-LB than WG at full cost.

With respect to tank healing, I will only roll LBs on the tank if absolutely necessary. In 25 mans, the MT is assigned a HL bomber and a Disc Priest which is more than enough to cover most situations without the need of additional healing. If I am tank healing (such as Vezax), I will slow roll a LB for the Nourish boost.

Regrowth has a very big following. I hate it. Well, I don't care for it. It's expensive and cumbersome. The main reason I use it is not so much for the initial heal, but for the nearly 30 second Swiftmendable HoT it places on the target. Generally, only tanks or people that are going to be doing a lot of kiting (and thus getting range issues) ever get Regrowth from me. Some folks argue that glyphed regrowth is king of the hill (The HoT WILL get the 20% increase), but I found it encouraged poor habits for me personally. Your mileage may vary. It's been generally accepted that Nourish is a superior direct heal for spamming.

RG is another situational spell. On some fights, I rarely use it set aside MT fodder. On other fights, it makes up a respectable amount of my healing. I generally will use it if target has a deficit and can benefit from the HOT component.

Nourish is good, but not as much of a workhorse as you'd think. You really need at minimum one hot for it to be remotely efficient. Generally tanks get Nourish spam if they're taking heavy damage. Nourish is also an acceptable flash heal for things like Kel ice blocks. With the right gear/glyphs/talents, you can get some very, very high nourish crits. Generally used as a tank healing spell. Full T7 with Glyph makes for some powerful heals, but I worry what will happen as you change to Uld gear.

I think you're missing part of the point of Nourish. It's the same reason why some druids take glyphed HT. It's our general "flash heal" and flashes are good when players take rapid amounts of spike damage and need to be topped off immediately. It used to be THE spell on razorscale when his frostfire balls could kill a player in 2 simultaneous hits.

Innervate needs to be seen as a heal for mana. I usually use it on myself if things have gone very, very badly. Sometimes I cast it on undergeared healers to keep them up and going, sometimes I don't use it at all. There's simply too many variables to tell you when to use this spell. Recent changes make it no longer regen based on spirit so now it's much more diverse. When in doubt, you can always ask on vent what to with it.

With the changes to innervate, it becomes a very useful spell for dps who are not so efficient with their mana pools. If the healing required for the fight is easy, it will be a good spell for dps such as mages. On healing intensive fights, I will generally use it on myself and let the ferals use their innervates on the priests.

The rest of your guide looks pretty good. It matches how I heal in general and is theoretically the highest HPS output per second that can be maintained for insane amounts of time. Where Holy Light spam can maintain 15k hps on a single target, we can do that much in the raid. (FYI, our theoretical high is MUCH higher than 15k hps.) We compliment Holy Pallies the best in that respect.

Re: Druid Healing Guide - The Basics

Originally Posted by SirLancelittle

And I prefer it over rejuvenation because it it ticks for longer, ticks for more, and that initial direct heal is great too.

Hu ? Regrowth hot tick is half of Rejuv.

I tend to mostly use Regrowth on MT's and targets who will take more predictible damage (Frozen Blow for example if i see it coming). I dislike it's lack of speed for spot healing.
That being said, when looking at my wws reports i do think that Nourrish is too high in my healing list. The spell i intend to boost more however is Rejuv instead of Regrowth.

Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

I personally like to use:
Glyph of Nourish
Glyph of Swiftmend
Glyph of Wild Growth
-I'm usually assigned to raid healing and offhealing the various tanks during an encounter, or even sometimes healing a tank specifically, so this glyph setup does me well for my play style.

>> I'm not entirely sure why I see people completely overlooking just how powerful a talent Revitalize is... especially now that it can proc off of Wild Growth. From a single Wild Growth and Rejuvenation cast on either someone else or myself, I almost always see Revitalize proc at least two to three times, which can easily amount to 600 or so mana back to either yourself or your target(s). So in my opinion if you're looking for filler talents, drop the "2% reduced mana cost on Nourish" which, lets face it in a fully prepared raid will only save you a couple thousand mana in like.... 100 casts, restoring that much through Revitalize would only seem logical instead.

Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

I personally like to use:
Glyph of Nourish
Glyph of Swiftmend
Glyph of Wild Growth
-I'm usually assigned to raid healing and offhealing the various tanks during an encounter, or even sometimes healing a tank specifically, so this glyph setup does me well for my play style.

I don't get it...

While the Nourish glyph might be ok for offhealing, if you say that you usually raid heal, why would you use the nourish glyph? You won't have hots ticking on the members that need the flash heal the most anyway? I know it's more of a preference nowadays but I still prefer the Regrowth glyph to the Nourish one (ok, only because I'm still using the 4pc t7 bonus).

Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

Originally Posted by Socronoss

I don't get it...

While the Nourish glyph might be ok for offhealing, if you say that you usually raid heal, why would you use the nourish glyph? You won't have hots ticking on the members that need the flash heal the most anyway? I know it's more of a preference nowadays but I still prefer the Regrowth glyph to the Nourish one (ok, only because I'm still using the 4pc t7 bonus).

I don't know about his play-style, but I usually spray Wild Growth, Rejuv and Regrowth around the raid and then nourish-spam if anything heavy hits the raid. Sure, you're not gonna have full HoTs rolling on every raid member, but you can still extract usefulness from Glyph of Nourish.

Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

Originally Posted by Socronoss

I don't get it...

While the Nourish glyph might be ok for offhealing, if you say that you usually raid heal, why would you use the nourish glyph? You won't have hots ticking on the members that need the flash heal the most anyway? I know it's more of a preference nowadays but I still prefer the Regrowth glyph to the Nourish one (ok, only because I'm still using the 4pc t7 bonus).

I'm not using 4p t7 anymore, and as stated in my post, I'm generally not assigned to one particular role in a raid all of the time, so to be as flexible as possible I've chosen to use the glyphs that I'd listed in addition to the talent point distribution. And even raid healing there are plenty of situations between reapplications and cooldowns where a small handful of people might need a quick heal that hots just can't cover quick enough, thus the need for Nourish (or Swiftmend if available). :-D Hope that answers your question :P

Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

Just messing around and experimenting, but I'm now running Swiftmend, Wild Growth, and Innervate for glyphs. The Nourish glyph lost some of its luster once I broke my 4T7 bonus, and the Innervate has been very useful now that I'm casting it on DPS most boss fights. It gives just enough of a boost to my own pool that I feel comfortable using Innervate a bit more freely.

As a prior poster mentioned, I've gotten into the habit of carrying some Nourish Glyphs with me along with enough old T7 for the odd fight where I need to primarily tank heal, though it very, very rarely gets pulled out.

Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

just a question about resto addons, if grid/clique/xperl is usually used for pve (not so sure about it), what are the good addons for resto pvp? like the one's for arena/bg etc

I still use grid for pvp because it shows wich removable debuff is on the target. But for a druid healing ulduar hardmodes and doing 2,2k+ rated arenas, my UI is rather shite so I wouldnt mind some info ;D

Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

I wasn't overly impressed with the OP, but enough voices have chimed in that I feel this thread is pretty thorough at this point. I just wish it was organized better (in a more clear/authoritative manner).

Just a couple quick notes:

** Nobody cares about your HPS on Saph or Hard mode Steelbreaker. It adds nothing to this thread.

** All resto druids should be haste soft-capped as per the previously linked calculator. Pick up extra haste pieces so that if you get another upgrade or you're lacking some raid buffs (in a 10man for example) you'll be able to swap some things around in order to stay at/near it. After that I (personally) weight haste/crit about the same so I mostly make gear decisions based on which item grants me a little more SP/Int/Spi.

** Some quick numbers on Revitalize that convinced me: Another EJ post. 20-50mp5 for the raid is substantial, and that doesn't even take into account the dps/threat gains from extra rage/energy/RP.

**Regrowth is a strong spell, but it's inferior to Nourish as a direct heal and to Rejuv as a HoT so avoid it when both parts of it won't be utilized. In healing intensive fights there are 2 occasions where you should be casting regrowth:
1) To put a HoT on a tank. If regrowth is on the tank and he needs a direct heal use Nourish. For any set/glyph combo, Nourish hits at least as hard as Regrowth, costs less mana, is a 25% faster cast, has an extra 4% crit, and doesn't prevent the Regrowth HoT from ticking. It is just plain better.
2) To spot raid heal when somebody needs a direct heal or else they might die in the near (but not imminent) future and they might take damage in the next 30 secs. If they need a heal IMMEDIATELY Nourish, RJ/SM, and NS+HT are all better options than Regrowth.

Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

This was a great post, especially for newcomers to our spec. But, on the topic of 10,000 HPS.. This is easy. It only requires a few things. Hard-mode Iron Council is the easiest place to achieve meter cheese for resto druids, especially if you're raid healing specifically. A lone resto druid of any competence will cream all other healers just because of the constant and consistent damage to all players in the raid, something we are exceptional at dealing with due to the way our HoTs work. Specifically, rejuvenation. I've done this fight, and I have to say it's exceptionally enjoyable to heal. To achieve meter cheese, your job is to basically use WG (always on groups, never on single, faraway tanks) every single cooldown and cast a rejuv every single GCD you have available assuming WG is on CD.

With Ren's present haste, I can cast five rejuvs per WG cooldown. During hard-mode Iron Council, I can still pull 10k HPS easy even with another exceptional resto druid doing the exact same thing. Seeing 22k rejuv from a single tick on multiple players is pretty awesome, and that's not even counting WG. I'm fairly certain I could push past 10k HPS without difficulty as the only resto druid. And anyone with half a brain and comparable haste could, too. It's not hard. :P

Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

ok one thing ive looked at is im a healbot/decursive veteran. ive used it for a while but i downloaded grid and it confused the heck out of me -- is it really so much better than healbot that i need to learn to use it?

Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

Originally Posted by Renkoo

ok one thing ive looked at is im a healbot/decursive veteran. ive used it for a while but i downloaded grid and it confused the heck out of me -- is it really so much better than healbot that i need to learn to use it?

For me I had a similar experience in reverse. Up until about 6 months ago I just used Xperl, but decided that it was probably holding me back as a healer so I looked into alternatives and found Healbot and Grid+Clique as the only real options. I first tried Healbot but I found the interface very limiting and just got rather frustrated with it, then tried Grid and found it was very straight forward, clean, easily customisable, and had everything I needed.

Seeing as I don't have a lot of experience with Healbot you might want to take this with a grain of salt, but from what I understand it is very capable and hence if you've got it working for you and you're happy with it then there shouldn't be any need to switch over to Grid.

Re: Resto Druids - Healing Guide

Originally Posted by Zellandine

I'm fairly certain I could push past 10k HPS without difficulty as the only resto druid. And anyone with half a brain and comparable haste could, too. It's not hard. :P

the only reason u are not passing 10k is because theres not much damage in phase 1 and 2. if u skipped healing in those phases (just theoretically, dont try it ^^) and healed in p3 only u could easily reach 12-14k